Eli Lilly Goochland County Bioconjugate Manufacturing Facility

Lilly paid $38.39 million on July 23, 2026 for 227 acres of a former soccer complex at West Creek Business Park. Land control settled, site preparation and permitting are underway, and what goes on the parcel is a $5 billion plant that Lilly says will be its first fully integrated site for bioconjugates.

Project Scope

Bioconjugates (antibody-drug conjugates, in the longer form) pair a targeting antibody with a cytotoxic payload. Making them is not standard biologics work. The payloads are potent enough that the suites handling them need containment well beyond a typical fill-finish line, with the associated HVAC, pressure cascade and airlock design that implies. Goochland will run both active pharmaceutical ingredient production and finished drug product under one roof, alongside capacity for Lilly’s monoclonal antibody portfolio.

The site is roughly 20 miles west of Richmond in Goochland County. Completion is targeted within five years of the announcement, putting it around 2030. Lilly has not named an architect, general contractor or engineering team publicly.

The jobs math is the usual pharma shape: 650 permanent scientific and engineering positions against 1,800 construction jobs at peak. Virginia Economic Development Partnership and Goochland County Economic Development brought incentives to the table.

Why It Matters

This is one of four new U.S. manufacturing sites Lilly committed to under a program the company puts north of $50 billion, by its own framing the largest pharmaceutical capital program in U.S. history. Whether or not that superlative survives scrutiny, the aggregate is real, and it’s landing in a construction market where mission-critical and life-sciences work are competing for the same mechanical and electrical crews.

Central Virginia gets a third major pharma anchor out of it. For contractors in the region, the near-term signal is a multi-year draw on high-containment fit-out expertise, cleanroom subs and process piping — trades that are already thin nationally and don’t scale up on 18 months’ notice.

The parcel matters too. A cleared, entitled 227-acre site with utilities in a business park is a shorter path to steel than a greenfield, and Lilly paid to skip the queue.

Project Team & Details